State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, notes that California ranks 41st among the states in voter turnout. That’s a dismal showing, and a recipe for disastrous election results.

For his part, Yee wants to do something about it. Good for him. And good luck.

We all want to do something to inspire eligible voters to register and then actually cast their vote. It’s embarrassing to live in a democracy forged from the blood, sweat and tears of our forefathers, and then have so few people bother to participate.

But who can blame them?

In California voters have been systematically turned off by a broken political system in which big money seems to be the most important factor in who wins. Voters are deluged by attack ads, hounded by robocalls and inundated with nasty mailers until they just want to forget that there are elections at all.

Statewide, the failure by legislators to compromise on important solutions means every policy question ends up in front of voters who are not qualified to judge the merit of complicated issues, such as energy policy.

Pundits don’t necessarily worry, positing that the body politic is better served when only the most informed voters show up at the polls. In California, it’s not just the most informed who make the decisions, but the most motivated, as well. That means people with something tangible to gain – political brokers, public employee unions, special interest activists – are the most likely to make it to the ballot box and set the local and state agenda.

Legislators don’t deserve all the blame for Sacramento’s budget problem. Some needs to be shared by voters who abdicated their responsibility.

Still, expanding the amount of interested and engaged voters is a noble goal, and Yee deserves credit for trying. He proposes what eight other states have already instituted – allowing voters to register until, and often including, election day; some places allow registration at the polling station itself.

He says that Idaho, New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Wyoming have successfully implemented election day registration. North Dakota does not require registration at all, and North Carolina allows registration during early voting up until election day.

He says those states have seen a cumulative 7 percent increase in voter participation since passing the new rules.

The senator has talked to election officials in other states with the late registration, including Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who called same-day registration a “no-brainer” and claimed it was more secure than the current system because “you have the person right in front of you – not a postcard in the mail.”

Yee intends to introduce legislation to change current rules, timing it with the 2013 elections, when new technology called VoteCal is set to be in place. The new system will provide poll workers with immediate identity verification and eliminate the need for a lengthy registration process.

This step might not solve all of California’s election problems, namely lack of competitive races and an abuse of the initiative system, but it does offer an improvement. A healthy democracy requires a healthy electorate, as well.

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